He practices eco-friendly no-till
farming on his 5,000-acre spread because he believes it's good for
his soil. Wary of most "environmental" causes, he says, "I'm not
about saving the whales."

Nonetheless, last year Sayles
enrolled in a program designed to help curb greenhouse gas
emissions. He sells the rights to the 1,000 metric tons of carbon
his farming methods keep in the ground (and out of the air) through
the Chicago Climate Exchange, whose members purchase carbon credits
to offset their own pollution. At about $5,000 annually, he isn't
getting rich off the deal. But with federal carbon regulations on
the horizon, Sayles is betting that prices will rise. If so, he -
and a growing number of farmers and ranchers around the West who
choose soil-saving practices - may be able to cash in. "We believe
this is going to be the world's largest commodity market," says Ted
Dodge, director of the National Carbon Offset Coalition, a
Montana-based group that gathers and sells farm and ranch offsets
to the CCX. In theory, better land-use practices in the West could
keep over 19 million metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the
atmosphere per year, according to Colorado State University
ecologist Richard Conant.

But because switching
land-management styles can be expensive, most farmers and ranchers
are unlikely to be interested unless carbon prices start rising.
And some analysts worry that including farmers like Sayles - who
are just continuing to do business as usual - in any market-based
system may not lead to real reductions in new carbon emissions.

Agriculture is responsible for about 8
percent of the United States' greenhouse gas emissions. But farmers
and ranchers can alter that equation - and create other
environmental benefits - by changing how they use their land.
Practices such as no-till, where crops are planted without
disturbing the soil, slow decomposition and keep more carbon in the
ground and out of the atmosphere, says Conant. No-till also reduces
compaction and erosion, helping build more biodiverse soils that in
turn support added plant growth.

Ranchers can do the
same, mostly by reducing the number of cows on their land and
rotating them frequently through pastures. This allows the return
of native grasses, which suck carbon from the air and store it in
their roots. The new grasses also help restore ecosystems punished
by years of overgrazing. "The time is now to embrace some of these
new approaches that will hopefully encourage sustainable rangeland
management in the future," says Newkirk, N.M., rancher Jim Thorpe,
whose rotational grazing practices earn him about $15,000 per year
for the 3,375 tons of carbon stored in his 12,500-acre spread.
"Certainly the opportunity to have another income source is
welcome," he adds.

An increasing number of Western
farmers and ranchers agree. By April 2008, carbon offsets from at
least 2.1 million Western acres were for sale on the CCX,
representing about 570,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide kept out
of the air per year. (The United States would need to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions by approximately 1 billion metric tons to get to
1990 emissions levels.)

There is a
catch: Thorpe, Sayles and most of the others enrolled in
the current agricultural offset market are not actually making a
dent in new emissions. Rather, they're getting paid to do something
they've been doing for years. And finding new recruits may be
difficult: With carbon prices at only $6 a metric ton, plow-happy
farmers and heavy-handed ranchers have little incentive to change
their ways.

No-till equipment is expensive, says Sayles,
and many farmers are resistant to change. Sayles, who refers to his
own carbon credit earnings as "beer money," estimates farmers will
need to be paid at least $10 an acre (equivalent to nearly $40 per
metric ton of carbon) in order to convert. That could happen, says
Dodge. Prices in the European Climate Exchange, which trades carbon
under the mandatory European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, are
nearing that figure, and the U.S. is inching toward its own carbon
cap-and-trade scheme.

But EcoSecurities consultant Mark
Trexler, who has worked in the carbon offsets industry for over 20
years, is uncertain whether farmers like Sayles should even be
included in the carbon market. Offsets need to be verifiable
(meaning the amount of carbon stored can be scientifically
confirmed) and permanent. And, he believes, they should be
"additional." That means the extra income from selling carbon
offsets is what actually enables a farmer or rancher to change
land-use practices.

"You do want to have real reductions
in carbon emissions," agrees Boise State University economist
Sian Mooney. "And paying people to just continue
their current practices obviously doesn't result in any additional
reductions in emissions."

A strict offset market, which
is necessary if the U.S. is serious about combating climate change,
might have farmers sign contracts to practice no-till for at least
60 years. That could be a tough swallow for farmers who currently
sign five-year contracts. It also probably wouldn't let folks like
Sayles and Thorpe, who already employ soil-saving practices, into
the system. And farmers and ranchers might have trouble meeting the
high standards needed to verify exact emissions, since figuring out
exactly how much carbon is stored in various agricultural soils
across the country requires detailed, expensive and still-imprecise
science.

"It's just not clear how effective carbon
markets will be in changing land-management practices," says
Trexler. "(But) we absolutely need to find ways to incentivize
farmers and ranchers to take carbon into account."

Trexler thinks it might be a good idea to simply pay farmers and
ranchers directly to use progressive methods, rather than involve
them in the whole carbon market.

"Everybody wants to cash
in on this," he says. "(But) at the end of the day, if you let
everybody cash in on this in ways that don't actually increase the
amount of carbon being avoided, you could have a real problem."

Stephanie Paige Ogburn is a staff writer for the
Cortez Journal in Colorado.

More from Climate Change

With over 15 billion acres of rangeland and savanna on
Earth which sequester GHGs from the the air to their root zones via
photosynthesis of the plant growing process. Granted it
does not sequester alot of tonnage per acre...but there are tons of
acres.

Forest and minimum till farm acres also
sequester CO2 in their root zones.

In the
World schematic, the USA is upside down right at $7 trillion of
Asia dollars.

Clean air moves West to East
naturally, so if China and the USA were to really decide to clean
up their dirty air, China would likely buy Euro offsets, the Euro
then buys USA offsets with the net affect of USA dollars moving
back from East to West.

Since the polluters
buying offsets are actually buying some "time
value" to install exhaust scrubbers etc to clean up their
air, a 30% cleaner burn will result too.

Granted as the industry evolves, we are also
sequestering subatantial Nitrous Oxide, Sulfur Dioxide and
just a touch of O3 (ozone ) also.